Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Land Rover Defender, thanks to a surge of support from Lego fans and tweets from Land Rover USA getting their own fan base informed, has achieved the 10k support required to enter the Spring review.
I will update this article when Lego releases its official announcement.

Monday, February 25, 2013

What IS on Cuusoo anyway.

In early January I started a project to see just what was on Cuusoo. Lots of people have their opinions but I am one for facts. So I took a snap shot of the projects then cataloged all projects with at least 17 support, exactly 1812 projects (yes, I am that kind of crazy) out of 3645. I picked 17 as the cut off because that came close to the 50% mark on project count at the time (Half the projects were 17 support and above, half were 16 support or less). Also any decent project should pass 17 within four weeks of being published AND I got tired and did not want to go any deeper.

So what I have for you here is the data I collected from the fools errand. I will define the categoriesbetter and give percentages in a later posting. Blogger is not being friendly with my tables right now.

Broad Categories

Fiction IP

These are projects that contain IP for fictional concepts such as "Star Wars." Note that I always went the the original source media when something would fit in more than one category. So any Batman project is categorized bellow as a "Comic Book project" event though the Bat Pods and Tumblers are from the movies.

No IP

These projects are generic, submitter created AND non-commercialized, or reflect from the "natural" world. I included historical projects in this category.

Real Subjects with IP

These are projects that contain IP based on real subjects such as Architecture, individuals, and Corporations

Lego's IP

These are projects that contain IP based on Lego properties like Ninjago & Bionicle

Pick of the Week

My commentary is a bit light this week as I was spending quite a bit of time processing the data above.

Drdesignz has presented the rare gem on Cuusoo, a spectacular build that has not been overdone by Lego proper. Although there has been a technic hot rod there have not been any Creator Hot Rods since the Blue Fury (which technically predated the Creator line I guess). Regardless, It is a fantastic build. The fact that the engine lifts out with a jack is a really nice touch.

Honorable Mention

I was very impressed with the creative use of parts demonstrated in this microscale Dump Truck. The "ladder" on the side is quite clever and really like the windshield set up. It is a bit tall, but of course there are always a few complications on any microbuild.

Zurtech recently released a Metroid project which contained many of the elements presented in this project. After getting feedback from the fans and Cuusoo announcing that there would be no new parts produced for new sets they updated the Metroid project, paring it down from effectively three different sets to one.

This project takes one of the "discarded" sets, adds more content to fill it out, then released it as a sister project. To my knowledge, Team BTTF was the first to establish the method of creating a series of sister projects to create a "series" but I applaud every effort by Cuusoo creators to do so.

This method clarifies what people are supporting and increases the footprint of the creator and the subject.

Beyond that this is a fun looking set. I talked about the "brain in a jar" when it was part of the original release. I still love it and would like to have it on my desk. The Mother Brain body is an interesting feature. I like that Zurtech is planning for the set to only use one "Brain" but I do wonder how stable the brain + body build is, given its extremely top heavy nature.

Week of Cuusoo

I just can't bring myself to get behind these projects that are effectively the official minecraft set with a different set of colored tiles. In my book they are just a little better than the projects that are existing sets with brick color variations.